Mother of Compilers

 Grace Hopper rules!!!

What a badass woman, to be able to do as much as she did during such difficult times for both the world and women in general. I can only imagine how hard it most have been for her to enter such a man dominated world that is the navy. I have always known that it is because of brave woman like her that I and many other girls are able to study and work in fields that used to be considered men oriented. It is nice to see that her work is being truly recognized, titles such as “The Queen of Code” and “Mother of Cobolt” are not to be ignored.

She must had gone through many difficulties since childhood, like the reading said many of her skills were ignored or diminish by others. However, she was able to move pass all the obstacles and do exactly what she wanted to do. In my opinion Grace Hopper was not “way ahead of her time” like people say, she was exactly at the place and time she needed to be and the people that surrounded her knew it. She began her career in computer science why before it was a complete field and she made developments that are still important today. I find very interesting how in the video they describe her as woman who didn’t care for titles and never tried to be become a symbol for feminist, she just wanted to do her job. I think that for a time where it was still expected for woman to have a certain lifestyle and man another Hopper was treated like an equal by other man.

“I’ve driven a large number of people at the base partially nuts, after all insisting on talking to computers in plain English was a totally ridiculous idea and you couldn’t do that, expect that it worked” - Grace Hopper

Hopper invented the first compiler in 1951 effectively allowing people to communicate with a computer in a simpler way. This allowed people that weren’t mathematicians geniuses to start using them. This first compiler became the bases for the programing language Cobolt, which became the biggest programing language all around the time. Now we don’t really use Cobolt anymore but the bases in which it was build are still very much present in today’s compilers.

To finish, I think Grace Hopper is an inspiration for everyone not just woman, she always tried her best and kept trying and trying until she succeed, no matter her job position, sex or even age she would keep working hard and would keep teaching others. I admire a lot that even at a very old age she was still trying to teach the young while also keep on learning herself. 

 

-Grace Hopper next to the UNIVAC computer-